Before I delve into the next topic, I can't help but congratulate John Oliver yet again for his excellent deconstruction of the antivaccine movement on Sunday night. As I noted on Tuesday, it clearly hit the mark, given how angry one antivax blogger got over it. As of yesterday, over at that wretched hive of scum and quackery, that antivaccine crank blog known as Age of Autism, resident "Media Editor" Anne Dachel was still sputtering over Oliver's segment, labeling it Oliver's vulgar treatment of vaccine-injured and their families and posting a line about how allegedly "mocking and berating the vaccine-injured is the new sport of media bullies." Of course, as I pointed out Tuesday, Oliver did anything but "mock" or "berate" the families of special needs children. Indeed, he did exactly the opposite, although he did mock leaders of the antivaccine movement, all of whom richly deserve far worse for their spreading of misinformation that frightens parents into not vaccinating and thereby threatens public health. As I've noted for at least ten years now, though, whenever antivaxers are criticized for their views, one of their go-to moves is to wax all indignant and accuse the critics of "attacking," "belittling," or "mocking" parents of autistic children. If they can do it to John Oliver, who bent over backwards to empathize with parents victimized by misinformation, then you know it's just a tactic to try to shame critics into silence. This has real consequences.

As many of you know, I will be giving a talk at NECSS on Friday morning as part of the Science-Based Medicine session. My talk will be on recent developments in antivaccine activity and politics. Because I just came across an article today from last week that demonstrates another effect of antivaccine misinformation. It also illustrates a point that I plan on making Friday about how vaccine policy is becoming increasingly politicized and antivaccine ideology is becoming increasingly associated with the small government/anti-government right and how, as a result, what was once a bipartisan consensus on the importance of school vaccine mandates is becoming dangerously politicized. The best example to illustrate this problem is, once again, Texas. I also love how it illustrates the hypocrisy of the antivaccine movement as well.

If there's one thing antivaxers love to claim they're for, it's transparency. It's the free access to information, which, of course, according to them is being withheld from them by big pharma, the government, and the medical profession. To them, all three are "covering up" information showing that vaccines are dangerous.

Texas isn’t Minnesota — yet. But when it comes to vaccination, the links are too close for comfort. Non-medical exemptions in Texas — where parents opt their kids out of vaccines — have been on the rise since 2003, increasing 19-fold to close to 45,000. Worse than these raw numbers are small pockets of vaccine resistance across the state where close to 30 percent of children are unvaccinated, and maybe more. That level needs to be at more like 5 percent in order to prevent a measles outbreak like the one in Minnesota.

But bills that could prevent such a scenario in Texas died during the last legislative session. In fact, most of them never even got a hearing.

Here's where the issue of transparency comes in:

Here in Texas, there may be public schools with similarly low vaccination rates — but parents have no way to find out about them. It’s impossible to get information on whether your child’s school has a vaccination rate far below safe levels, even if you’ve got a child who can’t be vaccinated because they’re undergoing chemotherapy or taking immunosuppressive drugs for other medical conditions.

But sick kids aren’t the only ones affected by this lack of information. The measles vaccine is 97 percent effective among people who receive both doses. That still leaves 3 out of 100 children unprotected, despite their parents’ best efforts. A few of those kids stricken in Minnesota were vaccinated. Perhaps even more frightening is that this highly contagious and very dangerous disease can be spread to babies too young to have been vaccinated.

Yet even Texas’ House Bill 2249, a bill to bolster transparency and parents’ rights to vaccine information, didn’t make it into law this session, though it was the only pro-vaccine legislation passed by a legislative committee. The Parents’ Right to Know bill would have required the reporting of vaccination rates at individual public schools. Anti-vaccine groups raised straw-man arguments about how this would reveal families’ personal decisions about whether or not to vaccinate. No, it would not.

This is an argument that we frequently hear from antivaxers whenever laws mandating school vaccine rate transparency are considered. Of course, the Texas bill would have required de-identified information to be made available at the school level. Unless parents are speaking out or doing something to let it be publicly known that they are suspicious of vaccines, it's hard to imagine how such school-level information would make it easier to identify children who are unvaccinated or udnervaccinated. Certainly, antivaccine groups have a hard time making coherent arguments about how this could happen or to produce compelling examples of this ever happening.

Another claim about such a law is that the state already reports data by school district. That, however, is not enough. Vaccine uptake and exemption rates can vary widely from school to school. It's not enough for parents of an immunocompromised child—or parents who just want to keep their children as safe as possible from vaccine-preventable diseases—to know district-wide vaccination rates. Aren't antivaxers all about giving parents the information they need to choose for their children? Apparently not, except when it's their children and the children of parents who agree with them.

Lewis said during the hearing the bill “makes a very misguided presumption” that children with vaccine exemptions are responsible for spreading diseases and vaccinated children are not. She said the bill would make it easier for people to find out which children have exemptions.

“There is other information more relevant, such as the number of students with HIV, hepatitis and lyme and the number who receive live vaccines that can put the medically fragile at risk,” Lewis said.

This is all, of course, nonsense. There’s a difference between shedding and causing disease. For one thing, the strains of virus used in live attenuated virus vaccines are just that—attenuated. They’ve been weakened in some way so that they don’t cause the actual disease. Otherwise, a live virus vaccine would be the equivalent of giving the disease to the person vaccinated, which would rather sabotage the whole point of vaccination, which is to produce immunity to the disease without the vaccinated person actually having to suffer through the disease itself. (Scratch that, it would be exactly the same as giving the person the disease.) The question, then, is whether secondary transmission (transmission of the vaccine strain virus to others who haven’t received it) is a major concern. The answer to that question, is no, as these articles entitled Secondary Transmission: The short and sweet about live virus vaccine shedding and Live Vaccines and Vaccine Shedding. Also, yes, vaccinated children can sometimes be infected with the pathogenic organism their vaccine prevents against. That's because no vaccine is 100% effective. However, if you look at the actual attack rate, the risk of contracting a disease vaccinated against, the unvaccinated are always at a much higher risk.

If there's a disturbing development on the antivaccine front over the last few years, it has to be the increasing alignment of the antivaccine movement with libertarian, small government, and anti-government conservatives. It's a development that threatens to shred the social contract and the hard won bipartisan consensus on school vaccine mandates that have been so successful for so many years protecting our children.

More like this

As I sat down to lay down my daily (or at least week-daily) dose of Insolence last night, my thoughts kept coming back to vaccines. Sure, as I pointed out in yesterday's post, we seemed to have dodged a bullet in that President Trump appears on the verge of appointing someone who is actually…

It seems hard to believe that the Disneyland measles outbreak occurred more than two years ago. It was during the Christmas holiday of 2014 that an measles outbreak occurred centered at—of course—Disneyland, thanks primarily to unvaccinated children facilitating the spread of the highly contagious…

Back in December, I took note of the vaccine situation in Texas. First, I pointed out how a new article by Peter Hotez, MD, a pediatrician at Baylor University, had sounded the alarm that the number of schoolchildren with nonmedical exemptions to the Texas school vaccine mandate had skyrocketed by…

I've frequently distinguished between those who are vaccine-averse and the true, hard core antivaxers. The vaccine-averse tend to fear vaccines because of what they've heard about their supposed adverse effects, while it is the hard core antivaxers who are really originating and spreading the…

Lewis said during the hearing the bill “makes a very misguided presumption” that children with vaccine exemptions are responsible for spreading diseases and vaccinated children are not. She said the bill would make it easier for people to find out which children have exemptions.

“There is other information more relevant, such as the number of students with HIV, hepatitis and lyme and the number who receive live vaccines that can put the medically fragile at risk,” Lewis said.

I hope somebody with training was able to dismantle her ludicrous claims.
Children with vaccine exemptions ARE responsible for spreading diseases. This has been shown over and over.

John Oliver is a TV comic and unless you are a Phd level microbiologist you should reserve having any premature opinion
on this subject because it goes a lot deeper than John Oliver or this article have any concept of.

@Dorit: it's because they know that the pro-vaccine parents would avoid them and their kids wouldn't be allowed to play with the unvaccinated kids. It's a popularity thing, and they don't dare let things be known that would keep their kids from being popular.

John Oliver is a TV comic and unless you are a Phd level microbiologist you should reserve having any premature opinion on this subject because it goes a lot deeper than John Oliver or this article have any concept of.

How strange. Does Anne Dachel have a PhD? Does Jennifer Lewis, who said all sorts of foolish things about the vaccinated and the unvaccinated? Or do they get a pass because they're antivaccine?
Orac is an oncologist with a PhD. He knows better than most the danger that the unvaccinated pose to those undergoing treatment for cancer.
By the way don, do you have a PhD in microbiology?

Transparency really translates to conspiracy for antivaccidiots. They yell for transparency because all science that proves vaccines are safe they declare are bought and paid for by big pharm, or big government, or whomever. But some are smart enough to know that absolute transparency means the average person will have the information needed to see through their lies.

"“There is other information more relevant, such as the number of students with HIV, hepatitis and lyme and the number who receive live vaccines that can put the medically fragile at risk,” Lewis said."

Lyme CANNOT be spread person-person (the "chronic lyme" crowd will sometimes claim that it can, but there is no evidence to support their claims, and even they say that the supposed person-person transmission of lyme is through sex or vertical transmission, as far as I know), and HIV cannot be spread through casual contact-so she obviously has absolutely zero idea what she is talking about.

Claiming that identifying students with lyme disease-which cannot be spread person-person, or students with HIV-which is spread through sex or through exposure to a patients blood (e.g., reuse of needles), will "protect the medically fragile" is ludicrous and shows just how clueless she is.

Well, as it happens, so I am, and so are a number of people working at the CDC and other health agencies around the world. And these people tend to support vaccination.
(and so is little amateur me)

Do you even lift, Don?

---------------------
In other news, a bunch of French physicians are currently advocating to make 11 vaccines mandatory in France.
Recent outbreaks of measles and meningitis in Europe is giving some weight to their concerns.

@don-You don't have to have a PhD to see that vaccination is one of the safest and most effective medical interventions ever developed. Anyone who reads even a little about vaccines and the history of infectious diseases (except a delusional anti-vaxxer, of course) can see that, regardless of their level of education.

@Jonas: I had an insurance client who claimed she got Lyme from a mosquito in the Bahamas, sexually transmitted it to her spouse and parent-to-child transmitted it to her child. She never had had positive tests, nor did her spouse or child. But she wanted approval of 1 year's worth of IV antibiotics for the 3 of them because her LLMD quack said they all needed to be treated or they would get it again. (LLMDQ was a "cash-only" provider, with no malpractice insurance).

I wonder how much damage President Trump has done with his anti-vax comments? While Orac notes that anti-vaxxers have increasingly become aligned with libertarians, the fact that the President of the U.S. has repeatedly made false statements about vaccination is also concerning-especially since some of Trump's supporters seem to believe whatever comes out of his mouth, even if it is obviously false.

The anti-vaxxers were really excited in January, when Trump met with RFK Jr. and suggested that he'd set up a "vaccine safety" commission-fortunately, the administration seems to have abandoned that idea-but still.

And of course that 3% probably wouldn't seroconvert to the measles illness, either. A friend of mine's eldest did receive his DTaPs and TDaPs but has still gotten pertussis 3 times in high school. Not any other vpd, but for some reason pertussis is different for him.

Demoducus: Not any other vpd, but for some reason pertussis is different for him.

Ugh, that's awful. I am really really spooked about whooping cough- I rushed a little on updating my DTP because of a new baby in the family. I know whooping cough immunity wears off fast, but three times during a four-year span? That's worrying.

MIDawn: It’s a popularity thing, and they don’t dare let things be known that would keep their kids from being popular.

Yeah, in general, anti-vaxxers seem like the prom queens who never let go of their 'glory days.' I wonder if they'd ever notice that their kids inherited their personalities and that's what's making them unpopular and unpleasant to be around.

@don I've read this blog for many years, but this is the first time I've felt compelled to comment. I do not have a PhD in anything, I'm just someone who has done my "research" online. I've come to the conclusion that vaccines are safe.

However, my husband does have a PhD in microbiology. He even did his dissertation on viruses. He agrees with my conclusions.

Vaccine uptake and exemption rates can vary widely from school to school. It’s not enough for parents of an immunocompromised child—or parents who just want to keep their children as safe as possible from vaccine-preventable diseases—to know district-wide vaccination rates.

I don't know how school districts are organized in Texas, but it doesn't take a very large population base to have multiple schools in a district. The school district in which I live, population ~20k, has two elementary schools. I expect that school districts such as Houston, a city with more people than my entire state, would have multiple schools. I don't know if the rates between School L and School M in my district are significantly different, but if I were a parent of a kid who needed a medical exemption to vaccine requirements, you can bet I would try to find out, and take appropriate action if the rates were different.

You will probably find significant differences in vaccination rates in Minneapolis. Presumably the Somali community, like other immigrant communities before them, are clustered in certain neighborhoods, and the schools that serve those neighborhoods are therefore likely to have significantly lower MMR uptake rates than other schools that serve neighborhoods without significant Somali populations.

IANAL, but I think a case could be made that the ADA requires reporting at the individual school level. The argument is that an immunocompromised child would have to be kept out of school during a measles outbreak if the school district could not guarantee herd protection levels of immunization at the child's specific school. I'll let the lawyers on this board confirm or argue against this position.

Oh, please. Opposition to vaccines, often massive opposition, has been around since the very first vaccine proved not to be the safe and effective miracle it was cracked up to be. Just don't expect to see the experts in that camp on the evening news, unless they're the target of a smear campaign. Nothing is more important to the mass vaccination pogrom than a perception of consensus.

There has never been a "social contract" or a "bipartisan consensus," and there are no vaccine "mandates." There are vaccine recommendations from government health agencies and their pharmaceutical comrades, which fortunately we still possess the liberty to reject--although in a few states, it now carries heavy consequences.

The vast majority of people have no idea what's in those needles, and inject them out of blind trust. That's starting to change, and the mass vaccination peddlers are running scared--as they should be.

Never been a social contract? Then NWO you're as ignorant of history as you are of biology.

The idea of the social contract comes from John Locke. The Founders were heavily influenced by his ideas, and the Declaration of Independence is based firmly on Locke's notion of the social contract. It's where "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" comes from, though Locke said, "Life, Liberty and property."

And there are indeed vaccine mandates that come from government: state governments. However, the penalties for noncompliance are not criminal, they're civil. You can't send your kid to a public school. Some vaccines on the schedule are excluded from the mandates, meaning they're optional. Hepatitis A for example, is optional in most places. Same for HPV and Hep B.

The issue of vaccinations was never a partisan political issue until recently. In 1950, the reddest Republican you could find would tell you to vaccinate your children if you want to send them to public school.

John Oliver is a TV comic and unless you are a Phd level microbiologist you should reserve having any premature opinion on this subject because it goes a lot deeper than John Oliver or this article have any concept of.

don, I* have a Ph.D. (notice formatting). Pray do tell me about the depths of understanding I might have been missing out on. My reading of the scientific literature provides me with the opinion that vaccines are mostly safe and effective ways to deal with certain epidemic diseases.

*Admittedly, my Ph.D. is in biochemistry, but everyone knows biochemistry Ph.D.s are more knowledgeable and sexier than microbiology Ph.D.s (now if only it was possible to find an emoticon around here).

I too believe that I have some qualification to judge vaccine safety and effectiveness. I graduated from an accredited physician assistant program at a major university. I worked for twenty years in medicine and spent a good part of those years working in tertiary-level medical or radiation oncology in two hospitals and in clinical HIV research in two more; in one of the latter I worked for an onco-immunologist who was one of the first physicians to recognize, and the first to name the disease he called Acquired Cellular Immune Deficiency. So I actually know something about immunology and the consequences of immunodeficiency.
Further, your comment about "since the very first vaccine proved not to be the safe and effective miracle it was cracked up to be". This is nothing but a straw man fallacy. Few if any have claimed that all vaccines are universally safe and effective. No one here would argue that point. But we don't need one hundred percent effectiveness or safety to know that vaccination is extremely safe and effective and is a far better alternative to actually having one of more vaccine preventable diseases. You can take my word for it. I have had several of them. I may well be the youngest native born American you will ever encounter to have had poliomyelitis.
But that's not really what I want to weigh in on. This is:
"Nothing is more important to the mass vaccination pogrom ...". I deeply resent your appropriation and trivialization of the word "pogrom". Have you ever met and talked to a survivor of an actual pogrom? I have. One lost her brother, the commanding officer of the first free Czechoslovak (and Allied) troops to enter that country who was killed in a pogrom after the war; she was lucky to survive it. A pogrom is a real and definite event, unmistakable in its nature, and in its principal meaning is a targeting usually of Jews, but also by extension any defenseless minority population. Using it the way you did is a close second to appropriating the Holocaust. Vaccination is not remotely like burning people alive in their homes, or cutting people down in the street, or gang rape and mutilation, usually accompanied by the theft of the meager possessions of the victims. In my eyes you victimize the victims all over again. It is tasteless, ignorant, and insensitive.
If it didn't add to a growing chorus of argument from ignorance that endangers lives, I wouldn't give a rat's about your unreality-based opinions.

OK don, while I don't have a PhD in microbiology I do have some friends and acquaintances who are so equipped. Care to tell me what I should ask them? Or are you like that other one who claimed to have some whizzy biochemistry that no-one on this site, none of the scientists, medics, nurses and the like who make up most of the regulars, would understand?

I notice he hasn't come back...

Nor the one with the, errrrrr, interesting claims about the GMC and Wakefield...

Allow me to join in the chorus of people who are ridiculing this claim.

We have a term for societies that don't have a social contract. That term is "anarchy". Every government has a social contract of some kind, even if it is only, "Our thugs with spears will protect you from those other thugs with spears." If you know anything whatsoever about Chinese history you will have encountered the term "Mandate of Heaven", which is another way of saying the same thing: when the government fails to uphold its side of the social contract, it is said to have lost the Mandate of Heaven.

Likewise "bipartisan consensus". At least until 1994, there was general agreement among politicians of both major US political parties that certain things should be done by government. There were disagreements on how government should do those things, and whether certain things should be added to the list, but government was generally considered to have a purpose, and anyone who thought otherwise was properly considered to be on the lunatic fringe. Starting with Newt Gingrich and the Contract on America, this former lunatic fringe has effectively taken over the Republican Party. These same people are trying to void the social contract as we have known it and replace it with ... I have never heard a coherent description of what the replacement might look like even in an ideal case. Some, particularly Ayn Rand disciples, think there shouldn't be a social contract at all. In a sensible world, which this is not, these people would at best be ignored, if not examined for mental illness.

@Eric Lund:
A similar idea occurred to me this week. So many of the archaic and inscrutable quirks of the English Parliament come down to "we've always done it this way." I admit to having long been fascinated and baffled that tradition could stick so thoroughly and (reasonably) well. But for some reason or other, the past few months on this side of the pond have made me jealous of that kind of stability.

Panacea, you're perverting the concept of the right to "life, liberty and property." These are natural rights of each individual. There is absolutely nothing in that principle to suggest that healthy people have an ethical obligation to subject themselves to the risks of vaccination for the sake of others. In fact, it indicates just the opposite--that no one has a right to demand such a sacrifice.

If healthy people believe the possible benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks, they can certainly choose to vaccinate. That's why there is extensive propaganda designed to convince people that's the case. You can bet the people designing it understand that the natural individual right to "life, liberty and property" means exactly what I said.

Eric Lund, your contention about the "social contract" depends on an assumption that widespread suppression of the symptoms of common illnesses (to the extent vaccines do that) improves all-cause morbidity and mortality in society. You have absolutely no proof of that, and it's a theory that is widely disputed.

You keep using that word, NWOR. I don't think it means what you think it means.

The concept of a social contract dates to long before vaccines were widely available. It has only been in the last 60 years or so that it has even been possible for vaccines to be part of the social contract.

There are still people alive today who remember what the world was like before vaccines became available. They vastly prefer having the vaccines available. Then there are people like you who overhype small risks to justify a position with no basis in reality. Endangering yourself by using exaggerated fears of a small risk to not use a protective measure is one thing. Endangering others is another thing, and is rightly scorned by most people. Because whenever we see large enough pockets where immunization rates fall below the herd immunity threshold, we eventually see outbreaks. And while these diseases often can be treated, they are very painful to the people who contract the disease.

Eric Lund, your condescension is not persuasive. There is absolutely no evidence that vaccines have improved *ALL-CAUSE* morbidity or mortality. None. All you are doing is tugging on heartstrings to convince people they did.

@NWOR-You are forgetting about the 1905 SCOTUS ruling. Compulsory vaccination *is not* unconstitutional. I'm not saying that I support forcing adults to get vaccinated, but it is legal. That is settled law, and has been for more than a century.

Before vaccines, an average of 178,171 cases was reported in the U.S., with peaks reported every two to five years; more than 93% of reported cases occurred in children under 10 years of age. The actual incidence was likely much higher. After vaccinations were introduced in the 1940s, pertussis incidence fell dramatically to approximately 1,000 by 1976.

And

Nearly 0.5% of infected children less than one year of age die.

Tuberculosis:

In 1815, one in four deaths in England was due to "consumption". By 1918, one in six deaths in France was still caused by TB.

And

The only available vaccine as of 2011 is Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG). In children it decreases the risk of getting the infection by 20% and the risk of infection turning into disease by nearly 60%.

In the United States, before initiation of the rotavirus vaccination programme, rotavirus caused about 2.7 million cases of severe gastroenteritis in children, almost 60,000 hospitalisations, and around 37 deaths each year.
Following rotavirus vaccine introduction in the United States, hospitalisation rates have fallen significantly.

The rest of the Social Contract starts showing up a little later, in the part the greedy ones don't bother to quote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. [emphasis added]

The greedy NWOR types insist on getting all the benefits of a social contract, but deny that there's any benefit due from them to the rest of the society. They further deny the "Safety and Happiness" goals, since it's not their safety that's in question.

warp the meaning of our Declaration of Independence with selective emphases

The "selective emphases" are to draw attention to specific ideas. As I noted, the emphases were aded; I added them for your benefit, should you be willing to accept it.

Please give some support for your claim that the Declaration of Independence is or even contains "false dogma", whatever that is. I'm guessing, based on your comments, that "false dogma" consists of any reality you find uncomfortable.

Emphases are used to draw attention to specific ideas? Wow--you're really font of wisdom, Espol. Thanks for noting that.

The Declaration of Independence speaks for itself. It confirms that every individual possesses inalienable natural rights. It confirms the supreme power of the People to rule its government, and to destroy it if it fails to protect those rights.

You are welcome to your ideas. You are not welcome to impose them on others. I wish you all the best in your personal Vaccine Utopia.

There is absolutely no evidence that vaccines have improved *ALL-CAUSE* morbidity or mortality.

Well, there is evidence that suggests that the MMR vaccine decreases morbidity and mortality due to causes other than infection with the target pathogen(s):

"Immunosuppression after measles is known to predispose people to opportunistic infections for a period of several weeks to months. Using population-level data, we show that measles has a more prolonged effect on host resistance, extending over 2 to 3 years. We find that nonmeasles infectious disease mortality in high-income countries is tightly coupled to measles incidence at this lag, in both the pre- and post-vaccine eras. We conclude that long-term immunologic sequelae of measles drive interannual fluctuations in nonmeasles deaths. This is consistent with recent experimental work that attributes the immunosuppressive effects of measles to depletion of B and T lymphocytes. Our data provide an explanation for the long-term benefits of measles vaccination in preventing all-cause infectious disease. By preventing measles-associated immune memory loss, vaccination protects polymicrobial herd immunity."

Well Stated NWO reporter. These people are all in the medical industry with the same training and there all liberals with misplaced faith in Pharmaceutical mysticism and Govt. Its amazing how supposedly smart people cannot seem to do the mental gymnastics to understand both sides of this debate. I have a 2.5 year old un-vaccinated. Bring on measles whooping cough flu etc. His immune system will kick the shit out those infections any day of the fucking week. You people have no faith in the human body and its power when nutritionally optimized. This is the new paradigm but try to posit this understanding to these folks is like trying to convince a Christian to be Hindu #DUMMIES Seriuosly your dumb

Actually, anarchism is all about the social contract, which is presumed to be strong enough that formal government enforcement should not be required. In some left anarchist philosophies the social contract is embodied in non-govermental communal bodies, e.g. labor unions in anarcho-syndicalism (ala the IWW).

For a term to represent the absence of a social contract, try "nihilism" or, if you prefer, "late capitalism".

We believe in nothing, Lebowski. Nothing. And tomorrow we come back and we cut off your chonson. Für mich auch Hellbierpfannkuchen!!

Ginny, the Founders didn't believe in no government. They also didn't trust the people as deeply as you believe. There's a reason why only property owners could vote in the earliest days of our Republic. They'd be horrified by the nonsense coming out of your mouth.

Jefferson's prose was very well thought out, and every phrase in there is in there for a reason.

The Founders wanted a stable government. They just didn't trust monarchy. They were also ardent supporters of vaccination.

"These people are all in the medical industry with the same training..."

I'm not in the medical industry...not even close! But all that training means I'll trust all these folks before I trust you and your ilk. They have proof, evidence, etc etc.

" with misplaced faith in Pharmaceutical mysticism and Govt."
I'm pretty sure pharmaceutical and mysticism are mutually exclusive and by definition so. Also, yes, we have some faith in the government and the law and the societal contract. It's the basis of civilization. NOT having "faith" (or better put, trust) would make laws unenforceable, money useless, and armies worthless. Dummy.

"Its amazing how supposedly smart people cannot seem to do the mental gymnastics to understand both sides of this debate. "
Maybe, just MAYBE that's because your "side" of this debate is so poorly thought, lacking in evidence, and pointlessly dangerous? (That's an assumption, as your sentence does seem to make much sense so I had to interpret it).

"I have a 2.5 year old un-vaccinated. Bring on measles whooping cough flu etc. His immune system will kick the shit out those infections any day of the fucking week."

And what, pray tell, is your basis for this claim? Your kid has your genes so he's tough and badass? Your kid is a specials snowflake, who's better than everyone else's special snowflake?

"You people have no faith in the human body and its power when nutritionally optimized. "

I don't even know what this means? You chide liberals for having "faith" in medicine and the government, but we're supposed to have faith in our bodies? To things that have proven to be dangerous to our bodies? Oh wait, sorry, I'm not nutritionally optimized. How do these even work?

'"This is the new paradigm but try to posit this understanding to these folks is like trying to convince a Christian to be Hindu"

I...I don't even know where to begin here. So I'll let it go.

"Seriuosly your dumb"

As noted previously, this is a goal in one's own net - not to mention hilarious when considering your entire comment as a whoel.

Spare me your vaccine promotional lectures on principles of government, Panacea. No wonder you hide behind your anonymity--I'd be embarrassed if I were you, too. You could at least turn it into a commercial so your manipulation agenda is clearer to casual readers. But I guess your priggish missives are unlikely to have much popular appeal.

And she's back! Her latest trick is to demonstrate an updated version of an old legal axiom.
.
If the facts aren't on your side argue the law. If the law isn't on your side argue the facts. And if neither is on your side. . .
.
Find an online Thesaurus!
.
"priggish missives!?!?"

Congratulations, CJTX--you've just won the Most Sleep-Inducing Comment Ever Award! Too bad you can't write them in real time, so people could start napping when they see the "CJTX is writing a comment..." placeholder.

Aaawww. I was angling for that award, especially by fisking the religious nonsense posted under your 'nym. Mayhap I should try harder, but your nonsense makes it so easy.

BTW, it's considered a surrender when one is reduced to posting only ad hom insults in reply to substantive comments you can't address in a substantive fashion. I'm referring, of course, to your replies concerning the social contract, that start off as "nuh uh" and went downhill from there.

You might try coupling the announcement with your response to a question I asked a few hours ago. You claimed that my quote from the Declaration of Independence constituted "false dogma", and I asked how the DoI was to be considered "false dogma." I have yet to see any response to that question, just a trumpian attack on everyone who sees through your case and therefore knows better than to agree with you.

Pigeon Chess seems to be quite de rigeur among followers of a conspiracy religion, like NWOR is. That's why her game has degenerated to ad hom rants: it's the "crapping on the board" phase of the game.

In other exciting news from the Land O' Woo, I have just received complimentary (complementary?) tickets to an event to be be held at a local country club. A Functional Medicine Chiropractic Physician is sponsoring a free lunch*, at which it will be explained how his miraculous treatments will fix just about any sort of "neuropathy", plus Trouble Walking and other well-characterized disorders.

at which it will be explained how his miraculous treatments will fix just about any sort of “neuropathy”, plus Trouble Walking and other well-characterized disorders.

Wait, there's fake neuropathy now? I've had real neuropathy, ulnar nerve damage in my left arm; I could hardly use my left hand for like a year. I did a bunch of physical therapy and it's gotten mostly better.

So now I can type much faster, which comes in handy for the translation job and also for writing erotica inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft.*

*Just kidding, although someone should probably do this; I do have a lot of time on my hands.

It's amusing how the folks on this blog who claim to be medical professionals come here to ridicule their colleagues over intellectual disagreements. No doubt Dangerous Bacon would come back here after that conference to gloat over his fantasy that he blew them out of the water, while everyone at the conference is thumbing their nose at his clueless pompous assery. :D

In my time here at RI, I have learned that some chiropractors could be called 'medical professionals' - that is, those that are physical therapists with delusions of adequacy. The fact that Ginny thinks a "Functional Medicine Chiropractic Physician" is a 'medical professional' tells me that vaccines and the law are not the only things she's wrong about.

You must suck as an attorney, Ginny. If you can't even create a coherent argument here, you'd totally fail in a a trial where a judge actually enforces the rules of evidence, and won't allow ad hominem attacks.

And the woman who complains about doxxing has the nerve to complain because I use a 'nym more successfully than she does (translation, she hasn't been able to figure out my real identity)

And don't think I missed the fact you didn't actually try to refute any of my arguments.

Opus: Your "when the facts are not on your side argue the law, when the law is not on your side argue the facts, when neither are on your side find an online thesaurus" was absolutely brilliant! Applause, sir!

You illustrated my point quite well, anonymous Johnny--good job! Refusing to use the screen name of anyone who challenges your vaccine religion is a great intimidation tactic. You should hang out in front of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Court and hand out leaflets. :D

Still refusing to use my screen name, eh Panacea? I'll just start calling you Panacea Diarrhea--it seems appropriate for your foul excretions. Ad hominem attacks, appeals to ridicule and intimidation are your stock and trade--I guess you think no one will notice if you project it onto others. It's a common misconception among less creative disinformation trolls like you.

Resorting to ad hominem when presented with facts, figures and extensive documentation is the mark of a loser.

Let's see now, NWO claims that the Founding Fathers didn't write what they wrote and actually meant something opposite to what they wrote. Regardless of the extensive minutes of meetings, journals and surviving newspapers still available today. Resorts to ad hominem.

NWO is countered with a mountain of citations disproving the notion that infectious disease killed many children and adults, deaths which are absent today, due to those vaccines curbing what previously was massive epidemics. Resorts to ad hominem.

As near as I can ascertain, NWO wants to enjoy victor's justice, while staring defeat squarely in the face.

Arm yourself with factual knowledge, rather than conspiracy theory nonsense.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contractualism
You might also look up Age of Enlightenment and join us in it.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
Obviously, quite a novel construct, dating back to 1625 and all.
I'd also suggest that you read the US Constitution in its entirety. It's not all that long, it's not complicated and the welfare of the people was considered so great of importance that it was mentioned in the preamble and in section 8.

Refusing to use the screen name of anyone who challenges your vaccine religion is a great intimidation tactic.

How about posting Dorit's name and picture on YouTube with the 'animated caption' saying she has 'a collection of skeletons in her basement'? How does that rate? Higher or lower? Seriously, I want to know.

You should arm yourself with knowledge first, Wzrd1. Only in your totalitarian fantasy land does the power to provide for the general welfare grant the power to compel non-consensual medical treatment. Were you looking in Stalin's archives by mistake?

Not to mention that there is massive dispute about the contention that vaccines promote the general welfare. The evidence is clear--they do not.

While you're studying, why don't you find where the US Constitution authorizes covert mass surveillance and personal data gathering. I've been looking for that.

You should arm yourself with knowledge first, Wzrd1. Only in your totalitarian fantasy land does the power to provide for the general welfare grant the power to compel non-consensual medical treatment. Were you looking in Stalin’s archives by mistake?

Where and what is this "non-consensual medical treatment"? If you're misspeaking about vaccination, you've already been given a cite for the SCOTUS decision that a vaccination requirement is authorized under the constitution.

Not to mention that there is massive dispute about the contention that vaccines promote the general welfare.

There is no actual, honest, good-faith dispute, where there's evidence on both or all sides—all the evidence supports the anti-VPD arguments.

The evidence is clear–they do not.

Where can this clear evidence be found? Or is this just another repetition of the unsupported claims from the anti-vax religion?

While you’re studying, why don’t you find where the US Constitution authorizes covert mass surveillance and personal data gathering. I’ve been looking for that.

I'm sure the bible of the anti-vax religion says something about "when your interlocutor points out that you have no evidence to support your claims, change the subject". It must, because that's one of the most common tactics used, as in NWOR's reply here.

Johnny, do you have a website or blog where you report on important issues or publish opinion pieces, and take responsibility for the content by disclosing your own identity? Or are comment sections the only outlet for your "brilliance," under cover of anonymity?

No, I'm just some random guy on the Internet who doesn't care much for hypocritical idiots.

Now, can you answer a simple question, or will you try deflection again, or will you just ignore it? Or do you have another avoidance mechanism up your sleeve? You say you take responsibility, yet you won't even acknowledge your actions.

Post was trying to work out what systems of this sort would do, and whether derivability of a given string was decidable, using just pencil and paper (!), in 1921 when he did his postdoc year at Princeton. It almost literally drove him mad: my Lille friend Liesbeth De Mol has discovered evidence that it was working on tag systems that drove Post to his first manic episode, which was followed by thirty years of mental illness and occasional hospitalization for what we now call bipolar disorder.

I can relate.

Okay, and now I am off to distract myself from the fact that I am "a worthless piece of subhuman garbage," which is the self-concept that I have admitted to late at night to certain friends and also my old shrink back in Michigan, by doing the dishes or something.

“I have a 2.5 year old un-vaccinated. Bring on measles whooping cough flu etc. His immune system will kick the shit out those infections any day of the fucking week.”
And what, pray tell, is your basis for this claim?
Really? and this is why so many of you are ignorant... you keep reading the same old Journals, listen to the same old Doctors pushing the played out dying paradigm.... open your eyes and read this journal and blow your paradigm to smithereens..

I really thought that Ginny could maintain the facade of rationality a bit longer, but it wasn't to be. Now she's cast loose the anchor of reality and set sail on the seas of irrationality. Bon voyage!!!
.
Question for the commentariat: Before she set sail, did she realize that her post on Dr Gorski was doxing, by her standards?
I thought not.
.
Today's lesson, from the one and only Ginny: Self-awareness is good. Look at my posts to see what happens when you don't have it!
.
Sad!!!

This from NitWitOrdure Reporter:
"It’s amusing how the folks on this blog who claim to be medical professionals come here to ridicule their colleagues over intellectual disagreements."
A chiropractor is like those guys who show up at your door offering to recoat your driveway with material left over from a job in the next block. After you pay them, they spread used motor oil all over your driveway to run off with the first rain. There is no "intellectual disagreement" any more than there is intellectual disagreement between Bernie Madoff and his investors.

THEO, I had a look at the journal you linked to, but I didn't find any title or abstract that had anything to do with your apparent premise (if you have one under all that foliage).
"Bring on measles whooping cough flu etc. His immune system will kick the shit out those infections any day of the fucking week.” Do you have any evidence that that is true? Is it in the AJCN? If so, will you post a link to it? Meanwhile, why don't you look at the abstracts from the current issue, take note at the affiliations of the authors, and explain why that same "medical industry" you distrust suddenly becomes trustworthy when you think it supports you. While you're at it, tell us what "nutritionally optimized" means? Scientists of all kinds still can't agree what an ideal or optimum diet is, so how did you, not a member of the "medical industry", and not telling us what scientific credentials you might have, work it out?
What you are really doing is hoping that the crowd immunity among the vaccinated population will be high enough to protect your kid. If your child has to suffer through those preventable diseases, she or he will not thank you for it. If that child has any of the nastier sequelae from any of them, it will be too late to do anything about it. You're rolling the dice, but when they come up snake eyes, it's not you who will pay.

And NWO Reporter can't analyze new information or recognize when words rhyme - or not. And doesn't have much of a life besides obsessing about vaccines and foaming at the mouth at Respectful Insolence. Now she's reduced to creating doggerel.

When your alien friends return, perhaps they will appoint you post laureate.

Yeah, but I notice even more how much time the minions spend (or should I say waste) rewarding her trolling by replying. And don't tell me they do it for the sake of any fence-sitters who may be lurking, enlightening therm lest they think trolly may have a point. Nobody but regulars reads this far down these endless threads of troll-and-response gospel choir.

I won't engage in ad hominem, but the attempt at doggerel in #111 is indeed pathetic.

I'd like to thank JP and Tom for contributing interesting posts to the thread on Lovecraft, erotica, and From Beyond (definitely a cult classic... uh, cult cinema, not, well... oh, you know...)

A minion named Jane Ostentatious
's tenacious against the fallacious
When trolls are audacious
She gets on their case-shus
(She's really bodacious)
But gets stuck in a loop disputatious.
(Which sadly is not efficacious).

Methinks Jane made a typo with "post laureate". Surely she meant to type 'psot laureate'.

Yeah, but I notice even more how much time the minions spend (or should I say waste) rewarding her trolling by replying

Yah. I, for one, am looking for an intersection between Quint and, well, not Robert Hunter, even though it seemed like it might fly. And please be more careful than to use absurd constructions that allege you can notice the passage of time in some sort of plural-mind goo for the sake of playing hall monitor.

By pointing out the mutual gratification of the laughing and the laughed at, hdb ties the thread together (so to speak) as the troll whacking is revealed as a sort of virtual BDSM-lite. The minions chew on Virginia (!), and she just yells, "Bite me! Again!". Hmm, from what I've read about kink, the sub is the one who's really in control, and really getting off on it, and that does seem to be the case here. Maybe the minions should charge NWOR for the dom services. I hope everyone has agreed on a safe word. The kinky folks at Kink.com's public humiliation site insist on it all being safe, sane and consensual, but I'm not sure all three apply here. I could suggest that when the mutual gratification runs to hundreds of comments over a few days, it's nothing but what the Brits might call a 'wank fest', but I wouldn't want to come off as too much of a prude.https://youtu.be/8YNfvl_qhVE

I know your bent toward erotica, Sadmar--but I can assure you I gain no satisfaction from being swarmed and attacked on this blog. It is simply the price that must be paid to share a very important message. The glee the regulars on this blog gain from swarming and attacking is outside my control.

@NWOR: You say It is simply the price that must be paid to share a very important message.

You are not sharing any important message. You are pushing your idée fixe to the public. You have no proof for your beliefs. You just insist that you are correct, even when proved to be wrong.

The fact you keep coming back makes me wonder....after a while, people here go visit your blog to see what additional conspiracies you promote. Are you doing this just for the blog hits? That seems most logical to me.

PGP, "you’re assuming Theo cares about his kid(s). I doubt he does."
It doesn't matter, care or not, he wants to see his child kick ass, even if it's at a microscopic level, and he'll be disappointed if it doesn't happen. Talk about living vicariously through your children...

NWOR:"I gain no satisfaction from being swarmed and attacked on this blog. It is simply the price that must be paid to share a very important message."
What was that message exactly?
I went all the way back to the first comment. I didn't see a message.
As the bear in the punchline says, "You don't come here for the hunting, do you?"

For the record: I am, personally, rather prudish, and have no "bent" for erotica. Any interest I have there is strictly clinical, and stems from the fact porn comes up in several aspects of my professional field – film and media studies.

Anyway, methinks NWOR doth protest too much. She knows full well what responses she'll get here, and the more swarming point and laugh directed at her, the more she posts. This is hardly the place to 'share the message', as if we didn't know it all already (ad infinitum). And she seems to relish going off-message into primary school playground taunting. Message, my ass. This is personal. Anti-vax of her sort is a tiny fringe sub-culture, and most regular folks encounter it, they either walk away or, if that's not an option, just tune out.

At least here, people read her posts, and treat them like they matter. Where else, outside of her bubble, is she going to get that? I was joking, of course, in suggesting there's anything erotic in her engagement. I doubt it produces that sort of satisfaction. By why else would people submit to abuse from folks they consider sadists? Some sort of stoic/warrior thang in which they demonstrate to themselves how strong and badass they are, how they can take the best shot of our 'science' AND the point-and-laugh without flinching or giving in an inch. In short, in cultural studies lingo, the gratification in trolling is 'empowerment' – a concept I've always found bizarre since it refers only to feeling empowered, not gaining any actual, material power, and generally corresponds to some deficit thereof.

In short, if anti-vax wasn't weak and fading, NWOR wouldn't be trolling here at such great length. But I'll bet the (pointless) virtual struggle 'keeps her going'! I'm in the minority here, but i'd rather just let silence be the response to the trolls, because i think that hurts them the most – feeling ignored and lonely – and with the world as messed up as it is these days, I could use the Schadenfreude...

@NWO Reporter - if you'd prefer not to be pointed at and laughed at (or as you put it, swarmed and attacked), here are some strategies you might consider.

1. Write to make a point clearly, completely, and concisely. Innuendo, half statements, implications, and so on are a good way of getting misunderstood which can lead to gentle, good hearted mockery or hurt feelings.
2. Back up your point with credible evidence. If someone questions the validity of your evidence, bolster your evidence by explaining why it is in fact valid and, ideally, with additional independent sources. Be sure to understand that it's not necessarily true just because it's on the Internet.
3. If someone points out that you've made a statement that cannot be supported, acknowledge your faux pas, clarify what you meant (or admit you were wrong, as appropriate), and move on.
4. Take the high road. If someone does engage in some playful ribbing, such as altering your nym, using a name they believe to be your real name, questioning your web site design skills, and so on, try not to react. If you find that the provocation is too much to bear, and you find yourself crying into your pillow, explain that the comments have become hurtful - but try not to lash out yourself.

I'm not trying to discourage dissent. I'm trying to plead with the minions to limit their troll-feeding. And while sometimes "troll" gets used too cavalierly as a term for any sharp dissenter, I take NWOR as a 'true' troll: playing a game of baiting, just trying to get a rise out of the regulars and derail the thread, not intending a genuine discussion. That's monkey-wrenching, not dissent. If people want to come here and troll, that's fine with me, as long as it's OK with our host. I'm just asking others to think about staying out of a game they can't win.

@ Panacea
I don't think it's a question of 'interesting', or necessarily anything to do with her work. You can have an interesting job that's rewarding in several ways and still feel the kind of isolation/resentment/'dis-empowerment' from which trolling would be a form of escape or psychological compensation. But, of course, I'm just speculating in the specific case of NWOR.

JP, I get where you're coming from. I mostly stayed home and grumbled about how people in the West have some stupid ideas about fireworks.
Inspired by a twitter thread I tried to come up with some non-jingoistic 4th-of-July themed music and I decided on the Hamilton album. Brilliant, flawed people fighting their way towards ideals that they and we continue to fall short of, but still strive for.

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